"Shouldn't a great museum foster serious seeing before all else?"

Ive been trying to get out and go somewhere fun with Opeie since our trip to the air museum but there always seems to be something that gets in the way. Yesterday although the weather wasn't great it was the perfect chance for us to do something together. Last year one of the moms at Seth's school mentioned there was a toy museum not to far from where we live (well a 45min drive) but I completely forgot about it until Seth brought a letter home from school saying they were going on a school trip there in a few weeks. So I decided that's where we were going.

Mrs M had work and then the gym and I didn't need to get Seth from school so it all worked out quite well. I phoned ahead to make sure that it was suitable for Opeie's age and after packing a lunch we got in the car and began our journey. Opeie wasn't interested in a sing song, a dance or any interaction at all and decided to fall asleep. At least i had the Satnav to talk at me.

I pulled up in the car park and Opeie woke up five minutes later eager to get out the car and look at sheep?? not sure where that came from but that was what he was requesting. Sadly even super dad couldn't magic up sheep today so he headed in to the museum instead. I was a bit disappointed to find out that it wasn't a toy museum but was a museum with a small toy section. As im not really in to coalmines and sport history we headed straight up to the toys, Opeie's little face lit up.

There were some vintage toys but there were also plenty that i didn't think warranted being in a 'museum'. The first room was a series of glass cabinets displaying toys from all era's. It kind of reminded me of the boys great great nanny Robson's lounge, she has a glass cabinet full of fun little treasures from her adventures. Opeie was instantly drawn in by the Teletubbies, I'm not sure they really should have made it in to a toy museum but they were making Opeie smile and that was the main objective of the day.

The visit made it even more clear that we need to get Opeie some sort of play kitchen as he is getting a little more in to role play at the moment. There was a play fruit shop in the second room and Opeie was more than happy sitting there passing me different fruit and veg and messing with the till. I love watching him play he gets so excited, i don't want him to grow up.

I was quite excited (because I'm a big kid) when i found a box of stickle bricks in one of the units there, i used to have some when i was little and it was great to be able to play with them again. In celebration i made a Mrs M, anatomically correct of course (yes I'm very childish).

 

Even though there were only two rooms of toys in the museum there was plenty to do while we were there. We even got to play giant connect 4 and Snakes and ladders.

The clear winner of the day though was the large dolls house, Opeie was blown away by it and its got us thinking maybe we should get one for the house. He loved rearranging the furniture and putting the little wooden people in bed and got really excited putting the little wooden lady on the toilet, i also found it funny as it was actually a bathroom sink.

We had loads of fun at the museum, It was a great way to spend 2 hours but i wouldn't recommend it for a day out as you would run out of things to do pretty quickly. I hope they've got something fun organised for Seth's trip. Now to start looking for some fun things to do next week.

'Building a better future'

Much of the boys time at home is taken up by building, which as you can probably tell from many of the posts written, i love. Don't get me wrong I'm an action figure geek and i love a good Batman battle with Seth's figures but the variety of play that you get with Lego really cant be beat. The idea of having a toy that lets you just think of anything and then build it is genius and its obvious why Lego are such a HUGE company.

It's unsafe to leave Opeie playing with Lego alone because of the small parts, he's still into trying to put everything he finds in his mouth so the fact that Lego also make Duplo for younger children is great. We can happily leave Opeie playing alone briefly and not have to worry about him choking or getting pieces stuck up his nose etc. Also i think its great that you can use these on the large Lego base plates to build on.

Its not just Lego that we use in the house for our building, there's lots of different building materials for kids on the market these days. When i was younger i loved my Lego but i was also a big fan of Stickle bricks which i used to play with when having a break from the Lego.

While in TK Maxx last week when i wrote my post about Seth wanting to buy a present for Opeie to say sorry for busting his ball we also spotted these which i had to buy to try out as they reminded me of the Stickle bricks, their made by Fisher Price and their called Clipo. They are also great for Opeie to play with as the parts are large and the colours are great.

Recently in TK Maxx again we spotted these building blocks also which Seth has been loving at the moment. I think that because of his muscle condition he finds these easier to build with because of the size as he does tend to struggle with the smaller Lego pieces. Ive been on the look out for more of these blocks so expect another post about these very soon as i had a great find. These are also made by Fisher Price and are called Trio...

If anyone reading this knows of any other interesting building materials for children like this then please let me know. were always on the lookout for new things to try. Ive been meaning to try and get a picture of some interesting building pieces that Seth uses at school so if  do i will add them to this post i have no idea what their called.

Lego will always be our main building material due to the versatility of it and you can be sure to see many more posts about the things that we have built.